Hello everyone,
Sadly my mum passed away from color rectal cancer. For people that never read my post, my mum was an independent 87 year old, she was diagnose with stage III colo rectal cancer in October. Then they did all the tests and said there was no metastasis. Oncologist decided to do low dose of radiotherapy treatment for four weeks.
By the 7th session she started with low back pain which to begin with the radiotherapist said it was an isolated back ache not related to the radiotherapy, but the pain wasn't going away and medications were not strong enough to relieve the pain. After two weeks of no improvement the radiotherapist cancels the sessions because she had to be reassessed by the oncologist. We went to the oncologist appointment, my mum in a wheelchair (withing two weeks she became totally dependent) begging the doctor to take her pain away. The doctor refers her to palliative care, we asked all the questions whether radiotherapy treatment triggered the pain, he said no, and if it there was a possibility that she had metastasis, he said perhaps but they were not going to check, his priority was to relieve the pain. We had the palliative care doctor's coming a week after that, after two days of treatment when my mum's pain was mostly gone my mum dies suddenly from heart failure. It is extremely hard for us to comprehend why did that happened. The doctors tell us that it was unexpected but she had a heart condition and all the stress she had with the pain until it was properly controlled put a strain in the heart. We weren't prepared for that. I asked if the strong pain was metastasis, and they say most probably, but we have no evidence because they didn't scan since last December, so we didn't know but the symptoms she had with the strong pain that was moving to the hips and neck maybe made the doctor's think that she had metastasis.
My doubts are if we didn't give radiotherapy perhaps she would still be alive, my sisters and I are so upset over this we feel betrayed by the doctors, we put all our trust on them and follow their advice and my mum started deteriorating since the radiotherapy. As well how comes she didn't have metastasis in December and the PET scan was done on the 28th of December 2016 and she has metastasis of the bones (not by test evidence but by symptoms) by the 10th of February as soon as she starts radiotherapy treatment?
The doctors say it's nothing to do with the radiotherapy, but all I know is that my mum was well before treatment, has someone gone through the same or similar experience.
I would like to hear your opinions on the subject to put my mind at rest.
Thank you for reading my post.